CVE-2026-72355 PUBLISHED

netfs: Fix barriering when walking subrequest list

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 09.08.2026 Published: 15.08.2026 Updated: 17.08.2026

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

netfs: Fix barriering when walking subrequest list

Fix the barriering used when walking the subrequest list in retry as there's a possibility of seeing a subreq that's just been added by the application thread.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS Score: 9.8

AV:N - The flaw is in the netfs client retry path used by SMB/CIFS, Ceph, NFS+fscache, and AFS; a remote malicious or MITM file server can trigger NEED_RETRY via short/error network responses during client read/write I/O. AC:L - The attacker controls both sides of the race by timing retry-inducing server responses and issuing concurrent reads/writes (multiple threads/fds); no victim-specific memory layout or rare uncontrollable state is required beyond normal mounted-FS I/O. PR:N - No local privileges on the victim are required; a remote attacker operating a malicious or compromised SMB/Ceph/NFS/AFS server can exploit any client with an active mount performing file I/O, without shell or admin access on the client. UI:N - On commonly pre-mounted enterprise/automounted network shares, kernel readahead and writeback can reach the buggy retry path without additional victim action at exploitation time beyond existing background file access. S:U - Exploitation corrupts the client kernel heap and enables local privilege escalation within the same kernel security domain; it does not by itself cross a VM/host or IOMMU boundary. C:H - Observing partially published subrequest entries yields stale start/len/flags/io_iter values, causing out-of-bounds kernel reads and information disclosure from adjacent memory via mis-sized iterators. I:H - Corrupted subrequest metadata drives wrong-span reissue_read/write, erroneous list deletion, and refcount manipulation, providing heap corruption primitives that can be leveraged for arbitrary kernel writes and code execution. A:H - Incorrect list traversal and mis-issued I/O can cause use-after-free, refcount underflow, kernel oops, or panic, reliably crashing or hanging the affected system.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 288ace2f57c9d06dd2e42bd80d03747d879a4068 to be47c047250671c9225c0319ca4695be9b391c59 (excl.)
  • affected from 288ace2f57c9d06dd2e42bd80d03747d879a4068 to 5c6ce05e406520290c1d89da97fb3cd70c09137d (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 6.10 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 6.10 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 7.1.5 to 7.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2 to * (incl.)

References